1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to analogue to digital and digital to analogue converters.
2. Description of Related Art
Digital processing of analogue signals is widely known in the art because of the availability of analog-to-digital (A/D) and digital-to-analogue (D/A) converters. A/D and D/A converters are used to translate analogue information into digital form and digital information into analogue form, respectively. A/D and D/A converters are often used to interface between digital and analogue electronics.
An A/D converter accepts an analogue signal, typically comprising a sinusoidal varying waveform, and converts some characteristic of the analogue signal into a digital output such as a serial or parallel bit stream. This digital output can then be processed by digital circuits such as microprocessors, which in turn can be programmed to provide such functions as linear and non-linear gain characteristics, digital filtering, integration, differentiation, modulation, and other computations. Moreover, the digital output may be used directly or converted back into an analogue signal by the D/A converter. A D/A converter accepts a digital signal in the form of an N-bit parallel data word and converts it to an equivalent analogue representation.